Big House - Tiny Garden, in Upstate New York State, USA
Some folks plan their gardens with extreme care. They record copious notes about even the tiniest of garden events, every day of the year. They test their soils and amend as necessary to suit the plants they intend to plant here or there. They have lots of compost, mulch, soil and the like delivered well ahead of time. You get the idea.
I am not one of those folks.
I go out to my garden to play.
I take no notes at all. I make only cursory plans ahead of time, and these often change on a whim-du-jour. I then lose the plans so I have no idea what I have planted and where. I figure I’ll know what is where when it pokes its nose out of the ground. Now and then I go online to find out important info. This year’s search included (and may have been limited to) finding out what plants like to be next to onions. Turns out, not very many. This complicates my garden layout because I plant a lot of onions. Yellow, white, red, garlic and shallots this year.
Why so many onions you might ask.
My goal is to be able to sustain myself all year round, not just during the growing season. The trick to this for me has been to grow foods that I find myself buying often, and onions is one of those. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and winter squash are a few others. Then I had to figure out how to store them for the winter. I did very well this past year! In fact, I still have one shallot, oodles of garlic, and a few servings of sweet potatoes. I finished off my potatoes, parsnips and cabbage sometime in April. I am coming to the end of my frozen stash, but still have green beans, ratatouille, and loads of frozen fruits for muffins.
And
Here is my last onion!
You might be thinking that I have acres and acres to grow this stuff on. Surprise! Here is where all that magic happens:
That’s right. If I can do it, you can too. Enough said.
This spring’s big surprise is a rutabaga, a yellow turnip to some of you. I didn’t manage to get all of my fall crops harvested before the ground froze solid last fall. This rutabaga managed not only to survive the winter, but also now looks like it will be the largest one I have ever harvested (I tried to scrape some of the soil away so that you could see the developing root). I’ll plant them again kinda late this fall, and simply plan on harvesting them the following spring, which, if this year is anything like the last, would be right about the time I run out of the previous season’s root veggies.
This is my entry to Hive Garden Community's for May 2026. But wait! The challenge has not been posted! Which makes this a garden post for just because.
Thank you!!!!
I know I didn't post the challenge. Truth be told, I just couldn't be bothered. I don't know what else to say about that. I can try to promise to remember next month. Thanks for noticing. And thanks for posting.
I think you're more my style of gardening. Haphazard but it works alright. I'm shit at growing onions though. Spring onions, no problem. My swedes got decimated by cabbage moth (rutabaga) - devastated. I did get a PH tester to figure out wtf is wrong with my lemon tree. I miss my lemon and lime at the old place.
Thanks for your motivating post. I like you have lawn between the beds for the insects and bugs. We get obsessed with covering paths.
About the paths: I've been mulching and weeding and everything else in there. Also harvesting dandelion, lemon balm, cilantro, and dill as they come up. A lot of work! So last week I weed whacked the paths, and am going to continue to do so. I like it.
Onions: for some reason, they do well for me. I've found they get to their full size if I plant them on the west side of the beds, and keep them weeded well. I don't know anyone else who has success like I do. Must be I am doing something right there, I have no idea what. I thin them during the summer and get nice green onions, too.
I understand about not wanting to bother with the garden challenge. It was quite a lot of work when I did it for you. I noticed I hadn't been tagged.
I am always impressed by the amount of produce you obtain from such a small space. Even with a huge garden, I've never been able to grow enough of everything we like to eat in order to last an entire year. Especially onions; they don't do well for me. We've had some good potato years, some lousy years. The winter squash rarely last beyond March in our above-ground root cellar. How do you store your carrots? That's another we've always struggled with. One year I tried canning them, but they were big enough to need to be peeled, and boy! did that ever hurt my arthritic thumbs! There has to be a better way.
I really don't get that much, and I don't grow all of my veggies, although I mostly buy fruit in the winter. I only have to feed little ole me. Can't grow nightshades at all, or at least don't get good yields from them. This year will only be shishito peppers, which I bought a lot of last summer, and yellow sweet bell peppers because I like yellow in my food. A few handfuls of peppers frozen are enough for me all winter, but I'm hoping I can freeze those shishitos whole and pop them in the pans I cook steaks in for quick side dishes. My 'root cellar" is a small closet in an unheated room. Works great! Carrots I have never had enough to store for long; I've planted more this year, and will pressure can those with some dill. I love canned carrots! My dog does too. I watched a video about storing foods, and the woman just put them in the fridge, tightly bound in plastic bags. A friend of mine stores hers in sawdust.
With a small garden, it would not be a problem to lose the plan. But with the big ones I have and the many varieties I grow, plus trying to rotate to keep pests and diseases at bay, I must have a reliable plan.
You do really well with your small ones, it's really impressive! Go rutabaga! I had 1 kale survive this winter in the Big garden.
I've seen your plans! They knock my socks off! I can see why you keep those notes, too. It's necessary. I just ask myself "didn't I have peas in that bed last year?" I;m running our of places for the nitrogen fixers.
I know the problem of running out of places. I just hope Tom can find the time to create the 3rd garden this year...
You've been curated by @amazingdrinks! Delegations welcome!
thank you!
A spontaneous garden. I like it. It looks like the strategy works because that's one massive rutabaga.
It's not that big yet, only about the size of a tennis ball.
I started doing the raised platforms for produce gardens as well about 10 years ago. I don't really remember how that trend got started but it really does make a lot of sense and one added benefit is that it is a bit higher up off the ground and does wonders for my back.
What did you figure out? care to tell?
I keep potatoes and onions in boxes or paper bags. You're supposed to store onions away from potatoes, but it seems just four or five feet apart is enough. Sweet potatoes I wrap in newspaper individually. Winter sqaush can just sit on a shelf. All of those are stashed in the closet of an unheated room. Cabbage and carrots I still have to figure out.
I do wish I had made those raised beds taller. My back does not like that work. Fortunately, I have very little of it to do.
Well, I do ponder how I could do it, bone spurs in My thumbs and all (even tying hurts, but I do it anyway)... Being as I am a targeted, elderly, disabled, denied assistance, lost everything, destitute, and homeless lady, sheltering on a friend's floor and using His web on My 15+ year old laptop, not sure how I could do to make this happen for Me.
But oh, if I could!!!
Gardening is wonderful for health. I wish you could do it. Are you able to forage?
Not in this concrete jungle, where I am in a small apartment, no key (My friend does not want to give Me one because technically I'm not living here), and no transportation (and too disabled to walk far - and I would have to walk miles to forage).
But... Someday We will obsolete the tool called "money" (in all forms), and I will have My cabin in the woods. If I don't die before then. LOL! (I'm nigh 70!)
What If You Can Live as Richly as You Choose? (article): https://peakd.com/informationwar/@amaterasusolar/what-if-you-can-live-as-richly-as-you-choose
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Of course you're a fellow onion eater. I might have known. I love them and thankfully have great success growing them.
I do marvel at how you get so much from so little space.
You and I both have limited growing space. We do manage to get a large harvest to help sustain us until the following growing season. I put in 150 onions this year, the most ever. I hope they do well, since I buy them weekly. I did the red onions, too. Happy gardening.
I'm still learning so much every year. Onions seem to like the west sides of my raised beds, so this year they are all on the west sides. I put in 125, plan to thin out 50 over the summer, and should have 75 to over winter. We'll see. This years learn-the-hard-way lesson looks like it will be to use fairly new seeds. My whole row of beets is coming up very sporadically, and I used seeds that had been packed for 2018. I hate wasting space like this. Oh well.
I'm astonished by what you get out of your space. I've assumed you had quite a lot of land.
I have a normal-sized track home lot. But I only grow veggies on the west side of my house, it may be like 35 wide and 45 long. I cram a lot into that small space. My beets are very sporadic, too. I've done two plantings, and my seed was old, too. For the first time, I'm successful with a full row of peas. Usually, the snails or slugs eat them when they sprout. This year, I put crushed-dried eggshells along both sides. It seems to be working. Still something to learn after all these years, lol.